C. Drouin Blanche de Normandie Apple Brandy
-
Wine
Enthusiast
Product Details
Your Rating
Somm Note
Distiller Notes
With a nod to the traditions of Normandy, this apple brandy is double distilled and allowed to rest in stainless steel tanks for 18 months. Water is gradually added to bring down to proof and to gently aerate, helping the spirit become rounder and smoother. Blanche de Normandie harnesses a lively fresh apple fragrance and is well-suited for use in cocktails.
Proof: 80
Professional Ratings
-
Wine Enthusiast
The smell of ripe, just-picked apple is lovely, perfumed and slightly spicy. The palate entry is crisp and tart; the midpalate offers tastes of apple fritter, apple peel, cinnamon and nutmeg. Concludes with a note of cocoa or dark chocolate and turns semisweet and luscious in the finish.
Range: 90-95
Calvados has been in production for more than 400 years, but C. Drouin Calvados began rather unintentionally around 1960. Christian Drouin Sr., grandfather to the current head of the company Guillaume Drouin, purchased a country house in the Pays d'Auge area of Normandy in 1960. The house sat on a farm with an apple orchard, and Drouin Sr. harvested the apples on his estate in hopes of seeing a return. He was disappointed to find that the price for apples was so low that he wouldn't even recoup his harvesting expenses, so he held onto his fruit and sought an alternative solution.
Drouin Sr.'s friend, Pierre Pivet, had a mobile still and would travel to various farms to distill cider into calvados. This friend agreed to advise Drouin Sr. on pressing his apples into cider and distilling the cider into calvados, teaching him the art of making calvados from start to finish. Thanks to Pivet, even the earliest vintages of calvados produced were of a consistent and high quality.